The Tangles
by JustAwks
Summary: Three Parter, AlMei, AU. In which people suck and Al falls slowly. Rated T for mentions of violence, and eventual language.


It had been a cold and dark November day when she had met him. He was sitting in the park, eyes closed tight and hands wrapped around a to-go mug from the Starbucks around the corner, perched up high on the old bench. His hair was a mess of blond waves above his head, leaning and tangling and fighting with each other. His skin was pale, lighter than hers, and his nails were long and neat. She was far away, but from where she stood it looked like he was glowing.

She approached slowly, the frostbitten leaves crackling beneath her light footsteps. Her scarf was woolen and it rubbed at the back of her neck. She sighed.

"Hi."

He started, craning around his shoulder to see who she was. He smiled a little, faintly, and turned fully.

"Hey." He offered back.

His coat was worn, she noticed. And his face had a small dusting of stubble, as though he hadn't shaved for a while. His scarf looked homemade, and it was raggedy and torn, stuffed with little leaves that had blown in on the wind.

"Do you want me to move, or…?"

He looks confused, and his brow furrows ever so slightly. He reminds her of a puppy.

"No! No...I…you're fine." She pauses now, looks at the ground unsurely. She blinks, long and slow, and he files it away into his memory, but of course she doesn't know that.

"I'm Mei." She says finally. "Mind if I sit?"

It's three months later now, and the hard freeze of November has thawed into the slushy chill of January. She hasn't seen him since that day, sitting alone on the park bench, but she still remembers his scarf, ratty and torn and filled with leaves. To be fair, he still remembers the way she blinks, the pretty girl with the black hair.

It's a Saturday, colder than normal, and she's late for lunch with her older brother. Her coat is wrapped tightly around her lithe frame, and the large-framed glasses she wears only on the weekends are shoved high on her nose.

He's stumbling out of the doorway, a warm one this time. He'd managed to get a few hours of sleep. She's looking down, and he's trying not to fall.

This is how the meet, clashing into each other and tumbling onto the frozen concrete. His head throbs as it meets the ground, and her bruised knee smashes into his gut at an odd angle. She blinks down at him, shocked, and a smile breaks out over his face.

"Mei?"

He doesn't want to explain. If he'd left sooner, he probably wouldn't have had to, but her house was just so warm. _Yes_, he tells himself, _it's warm_. His staying has nothing to do with the pretty black-haired girl that blinks so slowly.

"I hope you know you're not leaving until you tell me why you've been living on the streets for God knows how long."

She's staring at the back of his neck, and he can feel the burning on his skin. He rolls his shoulders back, tried to alleviate some of the tension, but it's a lost cause and he knows it.

He shrugs, and he can hear her heavy sigh from across the room.

The urge to speak is twirling through his thoughts, threatening to pull apart his lips. He wants to tell her, he really does. But he can't. His mouth is opening, he can feel it, and he's powerless to stop it.

He wants to tell her. He wants to tell her about the late nights spent being rocked to sleep by his older brother. About the smashing of bottles and the thud of fists. They're not hitting him, no. They're hitting each other. It's not money, they have plenty of that. Sometimes it seems like they have too much money. It's their jobs, it's something they won't tell him about. They won't even risk whispering about it when he's two rooms over. He wants to tell her.

"Do you know when you fall in love with someone?" He asks instead.

She furrows her brow, and blinks, long and slow.

"What?"

"I just wonder sometimes." He doesn't bother to acknowledge her confusion. It'll make it easier to escape with out telling.

"How my parents fell in love, I mean. They certainly don't act like it now, but they have kids and a house and I don't really get."

She sighs, a sad little breath, and she shrugs.

"I couldn't tell you."

It's two weeks later when they meet again. She is smiling so bright as she leaves the library, wrapped up in a brand new red coat, hair gleaming and eyes bright, that he almost doesn't want to stop and say hi. He doesn't want to be the reason her smile might dim.

He does it anyway.

"Hey, Mei."

"Hey, Al! How are you?"

So he won't be the one to dim her smile.

"Good. How're you?"

She pauses, looks down. He sees the shift in her smile, the change from genuine to fake, and curses himself. She looks up again, sees the hurt on his face, and tries to smile brightly once again. It's a valiant effort, but it falls short.

"Good. I actually wanted to talk to you, about…something. Wanna come to my house to chat?"

She looks hopeful, so he nods.

½ an hour, two mugs of tea, a brief but messy battle with the cat over a spot to sit, and a rapid search of T.V. channels finds them huddles together on her sofa.

"So, what was it you wanted to talk about?"

She looks down and blinks that slow, deliberate blink. He gulps.

"It just—do you notice my race?"

His confusion shows on his face.

"What? No. What do you mean?"

"I mean I'm not from here Al. I'm from Xing."

He's confused again.

"So? What does that matter?"

"It's just, do you ever wonder how people see you? Does it ever bother you?"

"Of course it does, Mei. That's normal. Now, what exactly has brought this on?"

She sighs.

"People say things, and…I know I don't exactly fit-in in Amestris, but I never thought it would be this bad. I'm not a bad person, Al, am I?"

She blinks again, and he's so distracted for a moment he almost doesn't answer her.

"Of course not, Mei. You're amazing."

She smiles, and he feels himself sink deeper.

A/N:

Not exactly sure about the last part, but whatever. This is a re-write of a fiction story I wrote a while ago, but never finished because I suck at long stories and just gave up.

This is a modern AU, in which Ed and Al were adopted (after the death of their mother when Ed was 3 and Al was 2) and stupid people are racist and everyone dances off into a fluffy sunset eventually.

So yeah.

Review if you'd like, because I want to know how this goes over.

If not, I guess that's okay too…*sniffles*


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